Spectrum Blog

Wireless Communications

March 31, 2014 09:35 AM

Wireless Communications

A decade ago who would have thought that viewing your farm weather station’s data on your phone was possible? Or that sending alerts via texts, emails, or phone calls to multiple contacts would be widely used in agriculture? Technological innovations in wireless technology open the door for timely decisions to improve yield and quality by focusing on site-specific measurements. By using mid-range radio, cellular, or satellite technology, remote monitoring has become the standard by growers who analyze current conditions and trends in order to best protect their crops.

Throughout the season, crops require monitoring for multiple parameters such as temperature, humidity, wind, soil moisture, salinity, and light. These factors influence decisions related to irrigation, frost control, fertilizer application, and disease/insect management. However, farmers oftentimes are short on the most important commodity and resource needed to manage these activities: time. By using wireless communications, growers increase time and energy spent on other farm activities, while still gathering data just by opening a web browser on their smartphone or computer.

Because of technological developments, growers are able to consult the latest information as if they were on-site viewing a weather station’s screen or downloading information manually. Time-sensitive decisions are best made with the most current data. Growers can run disease/insect models with real time information, for example, and make decisions regarding their IPM (Integrated Pest Management) program from their office. This optimizes an operation’s resources by addressing actual pressures and conditions, rather than looking at data that is potentially several days old or using valuable man-hours retrieving data, while decision-makers wait for information.

As technology evolves and as growers continue to implement wireless communication to achieve Precision Agriculture, we can definitely expect to look back in a decade’s time and be amazed at what today’s future holds in store.